Inputting personal information into Internet web page forms is often a repetitive and time-consuming process. For example, in the online shopping context, a consumer desiring to complete a checkout process at a merchant's website may likely input most or all of the following information: first name, last name, middle initial, street address, billing address, telephone number, e-mail address, and financial transaction account information. This information may not be the same each time a shopper conducts an online purchase. For example, a shopper may use different credit cards for various purchases. Thus, each time the consumer wishes to purchase from another online merchant, a consumer inputs the same or similar information to complete the online checkout process.
This manual entry of information into online forms is tedious and fraught with the likelihood of omissions and input errors. For example, a shopper typing payment information into a checkout webpage may forget to complete some of the fields in the online form. This error may result in losing all of the typed information, if a user then presses the “back” button in a web browser, frustrating a user and increasing the time to complete the data input. In online shopping, such errors may go undetected by the shopper until after the checkout process is completed and the shopper may only be notified at a later time by the merchant that the information is incomplete or erroneous. In such a case, these problems could lead to an online shopping order being delayed or possibly canceled.
In addition, a person inputting information into Internet web pages may have different sets of information that they wish to input for different web pages. For example, in online shopping, a shopper may have multiple credit cards that they use for different purposes, for example, to get an extended product warranty, to maximize loyalty points, or to earn cash back bonuses for specific types of purchases. In such a case, a shopper inputs the information into the web page that is relevant for the specific credit card for that purchase type. This manual process again is typically time consuming and fraught with error.
A further problem with existing web page input methods is that the user inputting the information must either input from memory, transcribe from another source (such as from a credit card), or “cut and paste” the information into the online fields from an electronic document (e.g., a text editor or word processor). In the case of online shopping, this typically means that a shopper has to search for a credit card from a wallet or a purse, and then transcribe the information into the web page, field by field. A shopper that uses a specific credit card for only limited purposes may forget to use the card, or may inadvertently not use the card at all.
In addition, in the context of online shopping, a shopper frequently must have physical possession of the credit card in order to read the information to input. Alternatively, a shopper could store the information locally on a storage medium, such as in a file locally stored on a computer hard disk drive, and cut and paste the information into the webpage. However, this may be undesirable because the information stored on the computer may not be secure from other users. In addition, cutting and pasting pieces of information into a web page is also tedious and error prone.
Therefore, it would be useful to be able to automate the input of information into web pages in a flexible and secure manner such that the time it takes to input information into webpage fields is reduced and the information used can be tailored to the webpage automatically by the user. More specifically, in the Internet shopping context, it would be useful to be able to allow a shopper to have a way of securely pre-storing transaction card information for the shopper's transaction cards and presenting the shopper with all of their transaction card information such that they can automatically input all purchase information into any Internet checkout webpage for the specific transaction card selected for the purchase.